Homework Responses Wk 8 & 4

In the 2016, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency which is commonly known as "Frontex" was established. This was due to a call from European Union leaders to secure the regions external borders. The main focus of Frontex is to more effectively manage immigration, boost the EUs national security, and protect the free movement of its citizens (ECCEU,2021). European Border and Coast Guard Agency conducts joint operations and deployments into its neighboring countries territories. These operations and deployments are able to happen due to status agreements between the neighboring countries and the EU. This cooperation is vital to the success of Frontex and is very similar to the agreements in place between the U.S.-Mexico border and U.S.-Canadian border. One of the most challenging aspects of these international border agreements for the EU is the fact that they have numerous bordering nations, unlike the U.S., which only has Mexico and Canada. The EU utilizes its own system to protect their internal security and stop criminals or terrorist, this system is called the Schengen information system (SIS) and is a way to track wanted or missing people and objects (ECCEU,2021). This system is similar to what the U.S. uses to screen individuals entering the country, known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) or the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) (McHugh,2021). Both these systems are in essence terrorist watch lists used to identify potential terrorist before they enter the country. 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Europe faced a large geographic and political shift. This shift in turn had a large effect on their borders. The dismantling of the USSR resulted in the creation of 15 new European nation states. New bordered lines needed to be drawn for these nations, and due to some of their proximity to each other the Schengen Agreement of 1985 was implement to allow free passage between the nations and promote economical growth (Bradley, 2012).  This agreement was expanded over time with the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 to where now there are 25 states that are basically borderless (Bradley,2012).

References:

European Unity in the Post Cold War Era. (2021). Retrieved 24 February 2021, from https://www.e-ir.info/2012/02/22/the-cold-war-may-have-ended-but-europe-is-still-just-as-divided/

McHugh, P. (2021). Have Terrorists Crossed Our Border?. Retrieved 24 February 2021, from https://cis.org/Report/Have-Terrorists-Crossed-Our-Border

Bradley, B. (2012). Strengthening the EU's external borders. Retrieved 24 February 2021, from https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/strengthening-external-borders/